Month October 2017

(Doesn’t include some long domestic and hellish stuff, like the 15 to 17 hour people-as-sardines ferry from Kupang to Larantuka)

Shipper, Buenos Aires

Receiver, Aukland

Panama City to Cartagena by air. Hilarious test of us gringos as they make you ride a steep 8″ by 8″ beam (all warehouse staff gathered and smirkingly watching) from the dock to the road. Totally fuck-upable, but Lucinda said “screw you Latins” and we aced it.

Buenos Aires to Aukland. Hilarious because there was no draining the tank, disconnecting the battery etc, or even crating the bike, you just rode in and they strapped it to a palette. Then moved it through an explosive/drugs detector, then shipped it by their own Argentine LAN Airlines without any fuss. They have an amazing disregard for safety, cool if you’re shipping a bike, technically ‘dangerous goods’.

Aukland to Perth. Epic, the well known need for the bike to be completely spotless. The bike must be clean AS NEW. If they white-glove it and there’s any dirt, they return it to sender. Rightly paranoid of plant seeds on tires, or anything that could repeat the imported biological problems they’ve had in the past. So, buy the cleaning supplies and work for a day. Plus 3 days getting the bike approved, including a road test, insured and licensed.

Darwin Australia to Dili, East Timor, by ship. But Dili isn’t good at incoming freight and the freighter can sit in the harbour for a week to a month. The bike was 17 days in the harbour, plus a couple of days across. The flight was maybe 40 minutes.

Medan, Indonesia to Georgetown, Malaysia. The ‘onion boat’ is the classic and best-loved bike trip maybe in the world. It’s a small boat that reliably sails across the straight from Sumatra to Malaysia with tons of vegetables and your bike. They have the procedure and documentation down painlessly because they like the $400, everyone has fun. But it’s difficult finding them in the chaotic port of Medan, a test. The flight was about 30 minutes.

Bangkok to Vancouver. Piece of cake. This was the easiest and most economic trip of them all, maybe tied with Buenos Aires to Aukland, but the reception was even easier. The Canadian Customs official didn’t even want to look at the bike. We just broke open the crate and rode off.

Vancouver to Yangon. A couple of big scares, but the people at the far end are all trying to defuse stuff as it happens. It’s a little complicated as the bike can’t be on the road anywhere in Yangon so we’re shipping it further to a friendly police station out of town. Not dialed.

(All the above excludes the paperwork (and hassle of cash payments) that you get used to, very similar every time)

This is another strange flight/boat the bike has made and it’s been the most complicated.

The shipper and freight company made a mistake and the bike crate was too big for the standards of the smaller plane from Taipei to Yangon. Sorted out, after the shipper panicked everyone.

The government guide didn’t deliver the permit to Customs before the bike arrived. For a few hours last night it looked like duty, taxes and impound death. But somehow we escaped that, but it was a close thing. Whoa.

It’s just that they don’t get this everyday. No one starts with their own bikes from Myanmar, by air, to a city where motorcycles are illegal. But now we know what went wrong, it’s solved for the billionth chance we do it again.

So I check into my favourite news aggregator, Drudge Report, read a few stories and see that tattooed couple’s image at the bottom

And click through.

Here’s a good looking young guy who’s fully committed: blacked eyes. He’s found his boundary: he’s not a piercer, and nowhere close to being a mutilator, the most extreme boundary. I don’t mind his look, I think he’s pretty aware

Commie Bob Rae is flying to Yangon, Myanmar next week too. Maybe the same day

I’m not sure if he’ll be flying commercial or in a government jet. But either way, his flight is 4 hours longer, and 2 stops! from Ottawa, haha. So there’s that.

No, but seriously. Rae’s a smart guy, hasn’t been scandalous and is dignified. For many years too. So I wonder how difficult it is for him to be tasked to do something by idiot Trudeau. I’m not sure if you have to be very strong or very weak to do that. Either way there has to be some personal humiliation.

Because Ann Althouse’s rules of blogging include the following: be frequent. I know I need to get into the habit. So barring some catastrophe I’ll never post less than the month before (starting back in August) until I post 30 a month. The resistance is/was/has being/been trying to figure out what to write about, despite a life of controlled chaos. Althouse may be a secret provocateur: it’s possible she just likes to see political fights break out among retired and ancient lawyers in the comments section, and that’s her thing. I don’t have a twist yet, if you have an idea, email me in the contact menu.

In the interim, this one gets the numbers up.

And since there always needs to be an image, what Miss T has asked me to do several times, most recently a week ago